Technicolor Death

Edit Locked

Advertisement:

So the Final Battle is finally over. The Big Bad, a powerful personification from hell and/or an homicidal robot from the future, has been struck a lethal blow and is now done for. How does Hollywood celebrate this climactic moment? Easy, by having the defeated foe then die in a spectacular fashion, with lots of special effects and unusual things happening to him, such as explosions, flashes, gradual disintegration, things melting, etc.

Note that this is not just dying in a flashy way, this is when the flashiness comes from the death itself, so for instance a character dying by having a bomb inside him is not this trope, as the explosion comes from the bomb and not from the character's death.

Quite common in video games, especially for bosses—a good death scene is part of the reward for bringing down such an imposing enemy, and frequently Stuff Blowing Up makes for a good death scene.

Examples:

In Sailor Moon SuperS: The Movie, the main villain dies in this manner, where it shows her already blob-like face melting and swirling (she's merged with a "black hole" at this point so she looks like a glowing ball with a face on it) and then the whole thing explodes.

All the Monsters of the Week Sailor Moon destroys, with a unique death scene for each type. Also the way Malachite disintegrates when he is stabbed. Neflite too, although he is no longer a villain at this point.

Then Germatoid disintegrates in a flash of light when Sailor Uranus stabs him in the eye.

The three main villains of Soul Eater. While Medusa's disintegration into dark particles and Arachne crumbling into dust (or possibly dead spiders) was elaborate, the Big Bad, Asura, takes the cake with rays of light and an explosion of blue light. After Maka defeats him by punching him in the face.

While most destroyed Digimon disintegrate or explode into particles, Devimon and Myotismon have somewhat unique death scenes. Devimon slowly disintegrates into red/purple particles from the feet up, and Myotismon, the third time, is destroyed in a flash of light and rainbow shockwave.

In Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, when Kirby destroys NME, he disintegrates into blue particles in a similar style to Devimon.

In the Dragon Ball Z movies, Janemba is notable for disintegrating into sparkly particles once Gogeta defeats him.

At the climax of War of the Green Lanterns, all the colors of the rainbow shoot from Krona as Hal kills him.

Necronauts: When Fort destroys one of the cultists' sleeping bodies to demonstrate that they're not bluffing about having found their headquarters, the cultist's dream avatar lights up like a Christmas tree.

Rasputin in Anastasia. When his reliquary is crushed, green light shines from him before his skin melts off leaving a skeleton which disintegrates into dust. Since his reliquary was the seal of the contract between him and the forces of hell, his body and his soul were only an extension of their will through the reliquary and their property and the moment it was destroyed, the bond was broken and both his body and his soul were claimed by them.

Ruber in Quest for Camelot. Green light bursts from his chest and he disintegrates into smoke.

Towards the end of Barbie & The Diamond Castle, Vain Sorceress Lydia tries to cast a spell on the protagonists, but it backfires and hits her instead, surrounding her with swirling green sparkles until she disappears in a flash of light. Though she turns out to be Not Quite Dead...

Films — Live-Action

The Wizard of Oz: "I'M MELTING!! I'M MELTING!! OH WHAT A WORLD!! WHAT A WORLD!!"

And then there's the Nome King in Return to Oz, who crumbles into a pile of rocks upon eating an egg, which is poisonous to him.

Played with in Godzilla vs. Biollante. While Biollante doesn't die in the sequence described here, she undergoes a sequence which embodies the trope very well. After being mortally wounded by Godzilla, Biollante converts herself into a cloud of glowing green spores which rises into space, with an image of Erika appearing in the pretty cloud. At the end of the film, Biollante is revealed to have turned into a giant rose that is orbiting the Earth.

In a scrapped scene from the film, after Godzilla defeated Biollante in their first battle, the shores of Lake Ashi were to be covered in flowers of many different colours.

Highlander. The Quickening that occurs whenever an Immortal dies causes various sparks, electricity and destruction to surrouding vicinity. This is particular notable with the Kurgan, Big Bad and the last Immortal to die in the first film, in which a spectacular blue light shines from his headless neck, which then turns red.

The T-1000's death in Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a notable example of a Shapeshifter Swan Song, but it becomes even more spectacular when the T-1000 starts to do things like split into two heads, form into a mouth, and invert that mouth as it tries to save itself.

In the third sequel to T2 Terminator Genisys, the T-3000 ( John Connor converted into a brainwashed cyborg) is disintegrated by a magnetic field and after being killed his remains are extinguished by an explosion.

It's not enough for sunlight to just kill Gremlins. It has to melt them alive.

War of the Colossal Beast is a literal example. The entire film was shot in black and white EXCEPT for the title character's climactic death.

Thor: Ragnarok: Surtur is destroyed along with Asgard in a cosmic, blue-tinted explosion that he himself caused. (Hela doesn't exactly count because she was killed by the initial stab before the explosion)

Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, being tossed down a shaft while sending electricity everywhere. When he hits the core, that burst of energy is enough to show us he's gone.

Many regeneration scenes are like this, with the obvious difference that the character in question is in a sense dying but simultaneously getting better. They're also unusual in that it's the death of the hero, not the villain. No two regenerations have been shown to be quite alike; mostly it's been a case of how the special effects team wanted to show off at the time.

The revived series has at least tried to depict regenerations more consistently, usually involving the Time Lord's body erupting in golden energy. Ten's regeneration into Eleven was particularly violent and wrecked half his console room, either due to the amount of radiation Ten absorbed or how long he spent putting it off (or both). The real answer is, of course, "the production team wanted to make some tweaks to the ship."

Interestingly, while the Doctor got this violent-looking blowtorch-like effect, when the incredibly insane and murderous recurring villain the Master regenerated, the effect was quite peaceful looking with colourful energy smoothly washing over him. (However, it caused him to scream in agony, while none of the Doctor's regenerations ever did that...)

Kamen Rider generally uses explosions for its monster deaths, like Power Rangers, above. Some, however, decide to get fancy, such as the "burst into blue flames, then collapse into dust while a Greek letter hovers over your body" effects from Kamen Rider Faiz.

Near the end of Season 6, Hades is stabbed with an Olympian Crystal, is engulfed in blue flames, and turns to dust.

When Power Rangers villains die, they go out with a bang. Sometimes it's such that you'd think the monster's destruction would do more to the city than the monster would have if left alone. Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers in particular went the distance, with all sorts of flashy and colorful effects as the monster staggered around, leading up to the final kaboom (which could consist of two or three explosions.) They haven't looked like that in a while, even for main villains.

This of course applies to Super Sentai as well, with the champion probably being Emperor Zeba who bleeds red energy, dissolves into green energy, floats up into the sky while forming into a face, and then explodes four times.

When demons die in Supernatural they explode with red flashing lights. Angels take this to the next level where not only does white light explode from their body, but covers the entire room of wherever they're at.

Tabletop Games

Psionics: The Next Stage in Human Evolution: A victim of the Atomize talent is ripped apart at the atomic level, resulting in a rather brilliant and flashy display. The book even literally compares their atoms being pulled apart and spinning away into the air to fireworks.

In Final Fantasy X this is integrated into the plot: Monsters are formed by unsent souls, when they're killed these firefly-like souls emanate from their remains. Even then, you get some pretty cool death animations. A notable one that comes to mind is the jellyfish Sinspawn on the trip from Besaid to Kilika. It shudders, gets compressed into an oily black sphere, then explodes into a cloud of fireflies.

The most over-the-top and spectacular example in the series yet has to be Ultimecia's final defeat from Final Fantasy VIII. First she shudders, then her body releases explosions, then she fires a large laser into the sky from her (lack of a) face and then countless beams of light erupt out of her body until almost the entire screen has gone white. THEN she explodes. And it's still not over, since Ultimecia's distorting body then gets a slightly disturbing close up in negative colors and proceeds to disintegrate in a shower of bright light. And she survives it.

Challenging that is the likewise over-the-top and long death animation of Yu Yevon. Imagine the Ultimecia example above, but with sheer out-and-out disintigration coming from such a small target. It needs to be seen to be believed.

Final Fantasy VI has the standard boss death animation. Once the final bit of damage is applied to a boss, the battle freezes for a second, then the screen flashes white like fuses are being blown a couple of times, before flashing one final time and causing the boss to turn different colors, shake, roar and fade away. Chrono Trigger uses the same one, looking even more flashy as the bosses have actual animations too.

Though the Final Boss doesn't do this, all the bosses and standard enemies in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess explode upon dying into little Twilight fragments. Except strangely the Death Sword miniboss, which has a unique way of dying. When it is defeated, the sword itself explodes like a normal enemy, but the demon wielding the sword transforms into a swarm of insects.

Most of the bosses in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time get more unique death scenes. Gohma and Phantom Ganon disintegrate into blue flames, Barinade explodes into pieces and blood, Volvagia starts on fire, turns to a skeleton, and his skull is destroyed in blue flames, Morpha explodes into pieces, and Bongo Bongo turns to static (plain black in the Nintendo GameCube and 3DS versions) and melts. The most spectacular instance of the N64 games is Majora, the Big Bad of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, where rays of light shine from him and he disintegrates.

Bosses in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past freeze in place, flash multiple colors, have any body parts (that are separate sprites if they have them) explode individually before finally being covered in dozens of explosions.

The first game has each generic enemy dying by flashing colors and collapsing vertically into a little pool on the ground. Bosses get the more enhanced effect of flashing colors while beams of light shoot around and a big flash.

Most of the bosses in the remake flash shake, and disintigrate, piece-by-piece.

Defeated bosses in the Mega Man Zero series are usually engulfed in a spherical blast that emits beams of light after being defeated. Justified due to them being robots; since Zero's trademark weapon is a sword, it may have compromised their power systems. The radiating beams of light part? Not so much. Also, the attack that depletes their health meter causes much more damage than any other attack (blowing a chunk out of them if it's a charged beam shot, Diagonal Cut if it's with the sword), but that's probably another trope.

Mega Man and the bosses he fights turn into 8 lights and explode in 8 directions when killed.

Mega Man X bosses recoil in pain and explode for about 10 seconds as the background fades to white and they disappear into the background. 4 onwards started adding flashing beams of light to the mix.

Slain bosses in The World Ends with You fulfill this in two different ways, first turning black on a background of white noise, then radiating beams of light, and finally vanishing in a white burst.

In the old ZX Spectrum game Chaos, when a wizard is killed his sprite explodes across the board in all eight directions and all eight colours. And it is awesome.

Bosses in the Mario & Luigi RPGs tend to explode into glowing stars and lights when they die. In Partners in Time, they flash rainbow colors before doing so, and in both Dream Team and Paper Jam the stars they explode into are rainbow, after rainbow lights shine from them, including all seven Koopalings.

It is also notable that three of the main villains, Elder Princess Shroob, Fawful, and Antasma, explode into purple particles once defeated. Dark Bowser takes an even more spectacular level with a shockwave of light.

The bosses in Decap Attack would flash on and off brightly like a strobe light for several seconds as small explosions engulf them before disappearing.

In Kingdom Hearts, all bosses once killed freeze in place and emit circular light and electricity from their chest (or the closest thing to it.) Subverted in that you are then treated to a fade out and then a cutscene with a more appropriate death animation, though some still fall into this trope, such as:

Ansem, Xehanort's Heartless, died in a very awesome, spectacular explosion- subverted in that he's, strangely, fine in the next cutscene. ("fine" in the sense that he's still alive) Then, he dies again, in a shower of light beams... although it is unclear if all of those beams came from Kingdom Hearts, or if some of them were actually caused by his death, as this trope demands.

Marluxia from Chain of Memories had an epic disintegration into Cherry Blossoms and swirly darkness amidst a background that resembles a darkened sky.

Riku Replica in the same game falls down and emits a pool of darkness as if it was his own blood, then sinks into it.

Any of the major nobodies that die have a downplayed example where upon death their bodies start emiting darkness and light until they slowly disappear.

Each of the Cobras (the team of renegade commandos) in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater explode after being killed. This is played for laughs in some of the Secret Theater scenes.

Volgin in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater ends up defeated by Snake, and ends up being hit by lightning. He then catches on fire, and the bullet bandomeers end up being set off by the flames.

Monsters in Ōkami tend to dissolve into flowers. Boss monsters can be more spectacular; for instance, the Spider Queen turns into a giant lotus flower in the cutscene following her death. Devil Gates also cause the landscape to bloom when they're destroyed.

The way bosses died in Darius Gaiden and G-Darius- streaks of light pour out of them, then BOOM. Averted by earlier games in the series, the bosses would just turn grey and drop off the bottom of the screen.

In most of the games developed by Treasure (Dynamite Headdy, Gunstar Heroes, Mischief Makers, what have you), the bosses and even MiniBosses tend to explode in incredibly over-the-top ways, whether or not they're robots or have any mechanical components which could logically detonate. Most of these explosions are done with only one explosion sprite that's used like a particle effect, especially in their earlier games.

In Minecraft, normaly while mobs simply fall over and vanish in a puff of smoke when killed, the Ender Dragon starts to explode and disintergrate pixel by pixel while shooting out beams of light.

GLaDOS' death in Portal causes her chamber to explode/implode, blasting everything in there (including Chell) outside.

The original Half-Life ends with Gordon Freeman shooting out the Nihilanth's brain, killing the creature, and causing portal orbs to spew out of its head in flashes of green and blue electricity, one of which teleports Gordon into the presence of the G-Man.

Bosses in the original Yoshi's Island would go out with multiple brightly colored, sparkly explosions.

In EarthBound, Giygas traumatically dissipates into static as he is destroyed by the human emotion of all the people Ness and his friends have met on their journey, who are praying for their safety. In fact, Giygas' disintegration can be likened to that of a TV with red static turning off.

Kid Icarus: Uprising has Medusa disintegrating into nothing from head to toe after freezing in place, and Hades also disintegrating as the beam from the Final Strike pummels him.

Averted when you defeat the final boss of Star Stealing Prince. When you deal the final blow, you're suddenly booted out of the fight screen and treated to a scene of the final boss anticlimactically flopping over. The whole process literally lasts about 3-4 seconds. Then again, you don't actually kill the final boss; you just knock him out long enough to make your getaway.

In Bomberman 64, when Artemis is defeated, she is destroyed in an explosion of blue light. When you defeat the final boss, Sirius, he gets the most spectacular death scene in the game: Sparks with electricity, flashes rainbow colors, with orange and blue rays of light, then shatters to pieces.

Andross, both times he is destroyed, explodes with the force of an atomic bomb.

Likewise, the Aparoid Queen in Star Fox: Assault, falls into the core of the Aparoid Homeworld and is vaporized in a flash of blue light, letting out a horrifying synthetic screech as it bursts apart.

A "K.O." in the Super Smash Bros.. series, which is done when a character flies or falls too far off screen causes impressive, flashy beams of explosive lights that go across the screen that originate from the point of death. As of Brawl, a match finished this way causes a slowdown effect that really lets you appreciate the undulating glory of this.

Tabuu gets a similar explosion to Aparoid Queen in Brawl.

Master Hand in the series jets off, falling to the background and constantly exploding, writhing from each explosion, and causing the screen to fade to white. However in Smash 4, he rips apart, with black "swarm" shooting out and reforming into Master Core. Who then has his own version of the standard player death animation, except larger, flashier, and being a beam of darkness and lightning rather than light.

Ares in God of War, after he is stabbed, explodes in a nuclear explosion.

A Team Fortress 2 achievement item called the Bombinomicon has a purely cosmetic effect of making any death suffered by its wearer into a gratuitous explosion, even if they were killed by more mundane, non-explosive means. This means it is possible to clumsily fall from a height and die from the Falling Damage and see your corpse flopped on the ground, only to have it detonate a second later.

Battle Clash has a series of strangely muffled explosions engulf every remaining limb and piece of an enemy ST upon defeat. On the other hand, its sequel Metal Combat rewards every K.O. with an utterly satisfying series of explosions (and a much more appropriate sound effect) that causes pieces of the enemy ST to drop off from damage, leaving the remaining torso/core to bounce and stumble along the ground if it was moving when defeated. Then there's usually a final, larger explosion as well! ...Except sometimes you only see a portion of it, because the game uses a First Person view and the enemy ST's torso just exploded from stumbling as you were still moving along. Pretty much every enemy ST explodes this way, even in stages with midair/underwater combat. The Final boss ramps up the pretty, pretty explosions by including several of them in succession with bright flashes.

All ghosts in The Secret of Monkey Island explode dramatically when doused with the special voodoo potion, but Big Bad [LeChuck] actually rockets into the night sky and explodes like a firework show, allowing the protagonists to have a romantic moment.

Secret of Mana has, as the standard boss death, the enemy becoming colored with a red and yellow palette as if they were on fire, then covered in explosions before the screen flashes completely white and they completely vanish.

Trials of Mana freezes the screen, then shows white flashing followed by and taking it a step further with actual death animations, beams of light emitting from the boss' body, then a surprisingly well-animated screen-covering explosion that nonetheless leaves our heroes unscathed.

Western Animation

Valtor/Baltor in Winx Club. When Bloom extinguishes his flame from within, rays of light shine from him and he explodes in a flash of light.

Tirek in the first My Little Pony movie. When exposed to the Rainbow of Light, he explodes in a flash of light.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy